340 See Appendix C.
341 Cato, R.R. 139, where the language suggests that as the deity was unknown, the ius of the religious act was also uncertain, i.e. the ritual was not laid down. De Marchi translates (La Religione nella vita domestica, i. 132) "sia a te fatto il debito sacrificio," etc., which sufficiently expresses the anxiety of the situation. Keil reads here "ut tibi ius est," and gives no variant in his critical note; but the words just below, "uti id recte factum siet," seem to me to suggest the subjunctive. In any case there is no doubt about ius. In Tab. Iguv. vi. A. 28 (Umbrica, p. 58) Buecheler translates the Umbrian persei mersei by "quicquid ius sit," and compares this passage of Cato, together with Gellius i. 12. 14, where the phrase is used of the duties of a Vestal under the ius divinum in the formula used by the Pontifex Maximus, cum virginem capiat: "Sacerdotem Vestalem, quae sacra faciat, quae ius siet sacerdotem Vestalem facere pro pop. Rom." etc.
342 e.g. Aen. iv. 56, x. 31 ("si sine pace tua atque invito numine," etc.). Cp. Tab. Iguv. vi. 30, 33, etc. (Umbrica, p. 59), "esto volens propitiusque pace tua arci Fisiae."
343 Livy vi. 41 ad fin.
344 Wissowa, R.K. p. 318, and p. 319 for the illustrations that follow. Cp. Cicero, Part. Or. xxii. 78, where religio is explained as "iustitia erga deos."
345 Lex Coloniae Genetivae, cap. 64; C.I.L. ii., supplement No. 5439.
346 Livy i. 20. 5.
347 This follows from the definition in Festus, p. 321, and in Macrobius iii. 3. 2. This last is quoted from Trebatius de religionibus: "sacrum est quicquid est quod deorum habetur." In common use sacrificium seems to be reserved for animal sacrifice, but the verb sacrificare is not so limited. Festus, p. 319: "mustum quod Libero sacrificabant pro vineis ... sicut praemetium de spicis, quas primum messuissent, sacrificabant Cereri." It has been suggested to me by Mr. Marett that the termination of the word sacrificium may have reference to the use of facere for animal sacrifice, as in Greek ῥἑζειν, ἔρδειν, δρᾶν; but on the whole I doubt this. Facere and fieri are in that sense, I think, euphemisms, occasioned by the mystic character of the act (examples are collected in Brissonius de formulis, p. 9). Rem divinam facere seems to be the general expression, as in Cato, R.R. 83; or the particular victim is in the ablative, e.g. agna Iovi facit (Flamen Dialis) in Varro, L.L. vi. 16; cp. Virg. Ecl. iii. 77.
348 This classification, originally due to R. Smith, article "Sacrifice" in Encycl. Brit., ed. 10, has lately been criticised by Hubert et Mauss, in Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 9 foll.; but it is sufficiently complete for our purposes. At the same time it is well to be aware that no classification of the various forms of sacrifice can be complete at present; that which these authors prefer, i.e. constant and occasional sacrifices, is, however, a useful one.
349 R.F. p. 95 foll. Cp. Robertson Smith, Rel. of Semites, Lect. VIII.
350 R.F. p. 217 foll.
351 R.F. p. 302 foll. Meals in connection with sacrifice are also found at the Parilia (R.F. p. 81, and Ovid, Fasti, iv. 743 foll.) and Terminalia (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 657); but in both cases Ovid seems to be describing rustic rites; nor is it certain that the meal was really sacramental. What does seem proved is that the old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the house to be present at their meals—
and thus the idea was maintained that in some sense all meals had a sacred character, i.e. all in which the members of a familia (see above, p. 78), or of gens or curia, met together. Cp. R. Smith, op. cit. p. 261 foll. We may remember that the Penates were the spirits of the food itself, not merely of the place in which it was stored; it had therefore a sacred character, which is also shown by the sanctification of the firstfruits (R.F. pp. 151, 195). (The cenae collegiorum, dinners of collegia of priests, were in no sense sacrificial meals; see Marquardt, p. 231, note 7; Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 13, 39, 40.)
352 Cic. de Legibus, ii. 8. 19.
353 Livy i. 18. For constitutional difficulties in this passage, see, e.g., Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 50.
354 For this and the augurs generally, see Lecture XII.
355 The passages are collected by Wissowa, R.K. p. 420, note 3. There is no doubt about the inauguratio of the three great flamines and the rex sacrorum, who were all specially concerned with sacrifice, and of the augurs, who would obviously need it in order to perform the same ceremony for others—as a bishop needs consecration for the same reason. As regards the pontifices, Dionysius (ii. 73. 3) clearly thought it was needed for them, and we might a priori assume that one who might become a pontifex maximus would need it; but Wissowa discounts Dionysius' opinion, and I am unwilling to differ from him on a point of the ius divinum, of which he is our best exponent. If he is right, it may be that the three flamines maiores, who were reckoned in strict religious sense as above the pontifices, including their head (Festus, p. 185), needed "holiness" more than any pontifex, and so with the augurs. The insignia of the pontifices, as well as many historical facts, show that the pontifices were competent to perform sacrifice in a general sense (Marq. p. 248 foll.); but it is possible that they never had the right, like the flamines, actually to slay the victim. I do not feel sure that the securis was really one of their symbols, though Horace seems to say so in Ode iii. 23. 12. The whole question needs further investigation. It may be found that the essential distinction between the pontifices and magistrates cum imperio on the one hand, and the flamines on the other, is to be sought in the ideas of holiness connected with the shedding of blood in sacrifice. The flamen is permanently holy, having charge of constant sacrifices; e.g. the Dialis had duties every day. He is the duly sanctified guide for all rites within his own religious range.
356 Wissowa, R.K. pp. 339, 410 foll.
357 The whole subject of the preparation of the sacrificer for his work, and of the steps by which he becomes separated from the profane, is well treated by Hubert et Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 23 foll. The reference to Dr. Jevons is Introduction, ch. xx. p. 270 foll.
358 Serv. Aen. xii. 173; Virgil wrote "dant fruges manibus salsas, et tempora ferro Summa notant pecudum"; to which Servius adds that the symbolic movement was a (pretended) cut from head to tail of the victim. Wissowa, R.K. p. 352.
359 Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., s.v. "cinctus Gabinus."
360 Marquardt, p. 340. The Vestals were never, so far as we know, directly concerned in animal sacrifice.
361 See below, p. 190. For the colour of the garments, and the explanation referred to, see Samter, Familienfeste, p. 40 foll.; Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter, p. 70; and cp. von Duhn's paper, "Rot und Tot" in Archiv, 1906, p. 1 foll. That red colouring was used in various ways in sacred and quasi-sacred rites there is no doubt (see above, p. 89, note 46); but whether it can be always connected with bloodshed is by no means so certain (Rohde, Psyche, i. 226). In the case of women it is at least hard to understand. The idea of consecration through blood, which is very rare in Roman literature, comes out curiously in the words which Livy puts into the mouth of Virginius after the slaughter of his daughter (iii. 48): "Te Appi tuumque caput sanguine hoc consecro" (i.e. to a deity not mentioned). The sentence to which this note refers was written before the appearance of Messrs. Hubert et Mauss' essay on sacrifice (Mélanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 1-122). The theory there developed, that the victim is the intermediary in all cases between the sacrificer and the deity, and that the force religieuse passes from one to the other in one direction or another, does not essentially differ from the words in the text; but the French savants would, I imagine, prefer to look on the insignia in a general sense as bringing the person wearing them within the region of the sacrum, the force of which would react on him still more strongly after the destruction of the victim (see p. 28 foll.).
362 See, e.g., Roman Sculpture by Mrs. Strong, Plates xi. and xv.
363 For this and other insignia see Marquardt, p. 222 foll. The question is under discussion whether some of these insignia are not old Italian forms of dress (see Gruppe, Mythologische Literatur, 1898-1905, p. 343). For the wearing of the skin of a victim, which meets us also at the Lupercalia (R.F. p. 311), see Robertson Smith, Semites, p. 416 foll.; Jevons, Introduction, p. 252 foll.; Frazer, G.B. iii. 136 foll.
364 They, of course, wore the praetexta when performing religious acts. Cp. the Fratres Arvales, who laid aside the praetexta after sacrificing. Henzen, Acta Fr. Arv. pp. 11, 21, and 28.
365 Serv. Aen. xi. 543. The camillae assisted the flaminicae, Marquardt, p. 227. This is one of the most beautiful features of the stately Roman ritual, and has been handed on to the Roman Church. It was, of course, derived from the worship of the household (see above, p. 74).
366 Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 413 foll. Dr. Frazer is criticising Dr. Farnell, who had touched on the subject in the Hibbert Journal for 1907, p. 689, and had taken the more obvious view that death in a family disqualified for actions requiring extreme holiness.
367 The passages are collected in Marquardt, p. 174 foll.; we may notice in particular Livy xlv. 5. 4, where, though only the washing of hands is referred to, we have the important statement that "omnis praefatio sacrorum," i.e. the preliminary exhortation of the priest, enjoined purae manus. Livy must be using the language of Roman ritual, though he is not speaking here of a Roman rite. For the material of sacred utensils see Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 30.
368 Tibullus ii. 1. 11.
369 Cic. de Legibus, ii. 10. 24.
370 Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, ii. 352 foll.; consult the index for further allusions to the subject. Cp. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, Lecture III. [Fehrle, Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum (Giessen, 1910), has reached me too late for use in this chapter.
371 Full details, with the most important references quoted in full, are in Marquardt, p. 172 foll.; but some of the latter are applicable only to the Graeco-Roman period.
372 So we may gather from the Lex Furfensis of 58 b.c. (C.I.L. ix. 3513), and that of the Ara Augusti at Narbo of a.d. 12 (C.I.L. xii. 4333).
373 The real origin of the pontifices and their name is unknown to us. If they took their name from the bridging of the Tiber, as Varro held (L.L. v. 83) and as the majority of scholars believe (see O. Gilbert, Rom. Topographie, ii. 220, note), the difficulty remains that they are found in such a city as Praeneste, where there was no river to be bridged, and where they could not well have been merely an offshoot from the Roman college; see Wissowa, R.K. p. 432, note. Nor can we explain how they came to be set in charge of the ius divinum; and where there are no data conjecture is useless.
374 The covering of the head (operto capite, as opposed to aperto capite of the Graecus ritus) is usually explained as meant to shut out all sounds belonging to the world of the profanum; and the playing of the tibicines is interpreted in the same way. Hubert et Mauss explain the covered head differently: "le rituel romain prescrivit généralement l'usage du voile, signe de séparation et partant de consécration" (p. 28). Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 522, also holds that it is the outward sign of consecration; cp. S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. 300 foll. The fact, noted by Miss Harrison, that in Festus's account of the ver sacrum (p. 379, ed. Müller) the children expelled were veiled, seems to point to the idea of dedication—unless, indeed, velabant here means that they blindfolded them.
375 The wine was poured over the altar as well as on the victim, which suggests a substitution for blood; Arnobius vii. 29 and 30; Dion. Hal. vii. 72. I cannot find that any one of the many utensils used in sacrifice were for pouring out blood. Blood was, however, poured on the stone at the Terminalia (R.F. pp. 325-326); but the rite here described by Ovid seems to be a rural one, outside the ius divinum. In the sacrifice of victims to Hecate in Virg. Aen. vi. 243 foll., which cannot be ritus Romanus, the warm blood is collected in paterae; but nothing is said of what was done with it, nor does Servius help. Cp. Aen. viii. 106. In Lucretius v. 1202, "aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum," the context shows that the ritual alluded to is not old Roman. In Livy's description of the "occulti paratus sacri" of the Samnites (ix. 41), we find "respersae fando nefandoque sanguine arae, et dira exsecratio ac furiale carmen." Livy seems to think of this blood-sprinkling, whether the blood be human or animal, as unusual and horrible. Ancient, no doubt, is the practice, recorded in the Acta Fratr. Arv. (see Henzen, pp. 21 and 23), of using the blood in a religious feast, in the process of cooking: "porcilias piaculares epulati sunt et sanguem." (There is a mention of the pouring of blood in an inscription from Lusitania in C.I.L. ii. 2395.) For the use of wine as a substitute for blood, see the recently published work of Karl Kircher, "Die sakrale Bedeuting des Weines," in Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche, etc., p. 82 foll., where, however, the subject is not worked out.
376 According to Lübbert (Commentarii pontificales, p. 121 foll.) magmentum is the same as augmentum, which word is also found (Varro, L.L. v. 112). Festus, p. 126, "magmentum magis augmentum"; Serv. Aen. iv. 57, to which passage I shall return. For the equivalent in the Vedic ritual of the cooking and offering of the exta, see Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 60 foll.
377 R.F. p. 89.
378 ib. p. 10.
379 Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 60, 69, etc. Of course the prayer might be said while other operations were going on. For the constant connection of prayer and sacrifice, see Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10, "quippe victimam caedi sine precatione non videtur referre aut deos rite consuli." If Macrobius is right (iii. 2. 7 foll.) in asserting that the prayer must be said while the priest's hand touches the altar, one may guess that this was done at the same time that the exta were laid on it. Ovid saw the priest at the Robigalia offer the exta and say the prayer at the same time (Fasti, iv. 905 foll.), but does not mention the hand touching the altar. For this see Serv. Aen. vi. 124; Horace, Ode iii. 23. 17, and Dr. Postgate on this passage in Classical Review for March 1910.
380 Cato, R.R. 132, 134, 139, and 141. That these formulae were taken from the books of the pontifices is almost certain, not only from the internal evidence of the prayers themselves, but because Servius (Interpol.) on Aen. ix. 641 quotes the words: "macte hoc vino inferio esto," which occur in 132, introducing them thus: "et in pontificalibus sacrificantes dicebant deo...."
381 The verb is omitted here for some ritualistic reason, as in the Iguvian prayers (Umbrica, p. 55).
382 Virg. Aen. ix. 641, "macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad astra," etc., and many other passages. The verb mactare acquired a general sense of sacrificial slaying, as did also immolare, though neither had originally any direct reference to slaughter. The best account I find of the word is in H. Nettleship's Contributions to Latin Lexicography, p. 520. He takes mactus as the participle of a lost verb maco or mago, to make great, increase, equivalent to augeo, which is also a word of semi-religious meaning, as Augustus knew. Nettleship quotes Cicero in Vatinium, 14, "puerorum extis deos manes mactare."
383 Baehrens, Fragm. Poet. Lat. 180; Lusilius fragm. 143; Nonius, 341, 28 has "versibus."
384 It may possibly be objected that some of the deities were powerful for evil as well as good, e.g. Robigus, the spirit of the red mildew, and that the power of such a deity was not to be encouraged or increased. But all such deities (and I cannot mention another besides Robigus) were of course conceived as able to restrain their own harmful function; they were not invoked to go away and leave the ager Romanus in peace, but to limit their activity in the land where they had been settled for worship. We have no prayer to Robigus (or Robigo, feminine, as Ovid has it) except that which Ovid somewhat fancifully versified after hearing the Flamen Quirinalis say it (Fasti, iv. 911 foll.), in which of course the word macte does not occur. As the victim was a dog, an uneatable one, it is possible that the ritual was not quite the usual one. But the language of the prayer is interesting and brings out my point:
It concludes by praying Robigo to direct her strength and attention to other objects, gladios et tela nocentia; but this is the poet's fancy.
385 Evolution of Religion, p. 212, quoting Vedic Hymns, pt. ii. pp. 259 and 391.
386 Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. ii. p. 585 foll.; cp. 657. See also Farnell, Evolution of Religion, p. 195.
387 See above, p. 9. Religio in the sense of an obligation to perform certain ritualistic acts is in my view a secondary and later use of the word. See Transactions of the Congress of Historical Religion for 1908, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.
388 Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 26 foll.; C.I.L. vi. 2104, 32 foll.; Buecheler und Riese, Carmina Lat., epigr. pars ii., no. 1. All surviving Roman prayers are collected in Appel's De Romanorum precationibus, Giessen, 1909.
389 Pliny, N.H. xxviii. 10 foll.
390 In Anthropology and the Classics, p. 94.
391 Cp. Tibullus ii. 1. 84, "vos celebrem cantate deum pecorique vocate, Voce palam pecori, clam sibi quisque vocet." This murmuring was certainly characteristic of Roman magic; see Jevons, p. 99, and especially the reference to a Lex Cornelia, which condemned those "qui susurris magicis homines occiderunt" (Justinian, Inst. iv. 18. 5).
392 On the nature of this tripodatio see Henzen, op. cit. p. 33. Buecheler, Umbrica, p. 69, gives the Umbrian verb a different meaning, though he translates it tripodato.
393 Buecheler, Umbrica, pp. 13 and 52.
394 Wissowa, R.K., 333, inclines to the belief that prayer had a legal binding force upon the deity; but he does not cite any text which confirms this view, and is arguing on general grounds. I gather from the language of Aust (Religion der Römer, p. 30) that he thinks there was a germ which might have developed into a more truly religious attitude towards the gods, if it had not been killed by priestly routine and quasi-legal formulae. With this opinion I am strongly inclined to agree. Cp. the story of Scipio Aemilianus audaciously altering and elevating the formula dictated by the priest in the censor's lustratio (Val. Max. iv. 1. 10), to which I shall return in the proper place.
395 Westphal, quoted by De Marchi, La Religione, etc., i. p. 133, note.
396 See, e.g., ch. 141 ad fin. The prayer in the Acta of the Ludi Saeculares to the Moirae is an imitation of old prayers. See below, p. 442.
397 ib. ch. 139.
398 ib. ch. 141.
399 Hubert et Mauss, Mélanges d'histoire des religions, p. 74.
400 So Cato, R.R. 141, "si minus in omnes litabit, sic verba concipito; Mars pater, quod tibi illuc porco neque satisfactum est, te hoc porco piaculo." (The word for the slaughter is here euphemistically omitted; De Marchi, p. 134.)
401 Hubert et Mauss, op. cit. p. 55 foll.; Leviticus vi. I doubt whether the theory of the learned authors will hold good generally on this point.
402 Marquardt, p. 185, asserted the contrary, but cited no evidence except Serv. Aen. vi. 253, which does not prove the practice of the holocaust to be really Roman. Wissowa's exactness is well illustrated in his detection of this error; see R. K. p. 352, note 6. Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 135, leaves no doubt on the question possible.
403 Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. p. 131. See above, p. 35. Festus, p. 218.
404 Gellius iv. 6. 7.
405 i.e. lustratio. That this was a form of piaculum is clear from the use of the word pihaklu of the victim in the lustratio of the arx of Iguvium, e.g. Buecheler, Umbrica, index, 5, v.
LECTURE IX
RITUAL—continued
In the last lecture we found that the magical element in the Roman ritual is exaggerated by recent writers. But it has also long been the practice to describe that ritual as a system of bargaining with the gods: as partaking of the nature of a legal contract. "The old Roman worship was businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a contract with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterised by the hard formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness required in pleadings before the praetor."406 This is an excellent statement of a view very generally held, especially since Mommsen, whose training in Roman law made him apt to dwell on the legal aspects of Roman life, wrote the famous chapter in the first volume of his history. I now wish to examine this view briefly.
No doubt it was suggested by the necessary familiarity of the Roman historian with vota publica, the vows so frequently made on behalf of the State by its magistrates, in terms supplied by the pontifices, and dictated by them to the magistrate undertaking the duty. Some few of these formulae have survived, and it may certainly be said of them that they are analogous to legal formulae, and express the quasi-contractual nature of the process. Such legalised religious contracts seem to be peculiar to Rome; they are curiously characteristic of the Roman genius for formularisation, which in course of time had most important effects in the domain of civil law. But the vow as such is, of course, by no means peculiar to Rome; it is familiar in Greek history, and is found in an elementary form among savages at the present day.407 But at Rome both in public and private life it is far more frequent and striking than elsewhere. This is a phenomenon that calls for careful study; and we must beware that we are not misled by quasi-legal developments into missing the real significance of it from the point of view of morality and religion.
The vota privata, which include vows and offerings made to deities by private individuals, had never been adequately examined till De Marchi wrote his book on the private religion of the Romans; nor could they have been so examined until the Corpus Inscriptionum was fairly well advanced. There the material is extraordinarily abundant, but it is, of course, almost entirely of comparatively late date, and the great majority of votive inscriptions belong to the period of the Empire. Yet it is quite legitimate to argue from this to an origin of this form of worship in the earliest times, and we have enough early evidence to justify the inference. Among the oldest Latin inscriptions are some found on objects such as cups or vases, showing that the latter were votive offerings to a deity: thus we have Saeturni poculum, Kerri poculum, and other similar ones which will be found at the beginning of the first volume of the Corpus.408 They give only the name of the deity as a rule, and do not tell us why the object was offered to him; but they must have been thank-offerings for some supposed blessing. In one case, not indeed at Rome, but not far away at Praeneste, we have proof of this; for a mother makes a dedication to Fortuna nationu cratia, which plainly expresses gratitude for good luck in childbirth;409 and this inscription is one of the oldest we possess. Nor do they tell us whether there was a previous vow or promise of which the offering is the fulfilment. But in the majority of inscriptions of late date the familiar letters V.S.L.M. (votum solvit lubens merito) betray the nature of the transaction, and it is not unreasonable to guess that there was usually a previous undertaking of some kind, to be carried out if the deity were gracious.
But these private vota were not, strictly speaking, legal transactions, supposed to bind both parties in a contract, as we shall see was to some extent the case with the vota publica. They could not have needed the aid of a pontifex, or a solemn voti nuncupatio, i.e. statement of the promise; they were rather, as De Marchi asserts,410 spontaneous expressions of what we may call religious feeling; and it may be that he is right in maintaining that throughout Roman history they remained as expressions of the religious sense and of the better feeling of the lower classes. The practice implies three conceptions: (1) of the deity as really powerful for good and evil; (2) of the gift, a work of supererogation, as likely to please him; (3) of the grateful act and feeling as good in themselves. Surely there must have been in this practice a germ of moral development; I am surprised that Dr. Westermarck has not mentioned in his chapter on gratitude the extraordinary abundance of Roman votive offerings and inscriptions. Doubtless there lies at the root of it the idea of Do ut des, or rather of Dabo ut des; doubtless also it could be turned to evil purposes in the form of devotio, when promises were made to a deity on condition that he killed or injured an enemy; but in the ordinary and common example it is impossible to deny that the final act, the performance of the vow, must have been accompanied by a feeling of gratitude. The merest recognition of a supposed blessing is of value in moral development.
But it is in the vota publica that we undoubtedly find something in the nature of a bargain—covenant would be a more graceful word—with a deity in the name of the State. Even here, however, the impression is rather produced by the use of legal terms and the formularisation of the process, than by any assumed attitude of contempt towards, or even of equality with, the deity concerned. There is no trace in early Roman religious history of any tendency to abuse or degrade the divine beings if they did not perform their part, such as is well known in China,411 or even, strange to say, occasionally met with in the southern Italy of to-day; the attitude towards the deity in cult (though not invariably in the later Graeco-Roman literature) was ever respectful, as it was towards the magistrates of the State. The farthest the Romans ever went in condemning their gods was when misfortune persuaded them that they were become indifferent or useless; then they began to neglect them, and to turn to other gods, as we shall see in subsequent lectures.
The public vota were of two kinds: the ordinary, or regularly recurring, and the extraordinary, which were occasioned by some particular event. Of the ordinary, the most familiar is that undertaken by the consul, and no doubt in some form by the Rex in the days of the kingship, for the benefit of the State on the first day of the official year. Accompanied by the Senate and a crowd of people, the consuls went up to the Capitoline temple, and performed the sacrifice which had been vowed by their predecessors of a year before; after which they undertook a new votum, "pro reipublicae salute."412 We have not the formula of this vow, and cannot tell what resemblance it bore to a bargain; but the ceremony itself must have been most impressive, and calculated to remind all who were present of the greatness and goodwill of the supreme deity who watched over the interests of the State. So too at the lustrum of the censors, which took place in the Campus Martius every five years, it is almost certain that the votum of the predecessors in office was fulfilled by a sacrifice, and a new one undertaken. Here again we are without the formula, but that there was one we know from a very interesting passage of Valerius Maximus. He tells us that Scipio Aemilianus, when as censor he was conducting this sacrifice, and the scriba (on behalf of the pontifex?) was dictating to him the solemne precationis carmen ex publicis tabulis, in which the immortal gods were besought to make the prosperity of the Roman State "better and greater," had the audacity to interrupt him, saying that the condition of the State was sufficiently good and great: "itaque precor ut eas (res) perpetuo incolumes servent." This change, Valerius says, was accepted, and the formula altered accordingly in the tabulae.413 This story, which is probably genuine and is quite characteristic of Scipio, must convince an impartial mind that in this votive ceremony there was enough truth and dignity to suggest a real advance in religious thought, so far at least as the State was concerned.
The extraordinary vota were innumerable. They were occasioned by dangers or misfortunes of various kinds, the magistrate undertaking to dedicate something to the god concerned if the State should have come safely through the peril. Many temples had their origin in this practice;414 we meet also with ludi, special sacrifices, or a tithe of the booty taken in war. In two or three cases Livy has copied the formula from the tabulae of the pontifices; thus before the war with Antiochus in 191 b.c., the consul recited the following words after the pontifex maximus: "Si duellum quod cum Antiocho rege sumi populus iussit, id ex sententia senatus populique Romani confectum erit; tum tibi Iuppiter populus Romanus ludos magnos dies decem continuos faciet ... quisquis magistratus eos ludos quando ubique faxit, hi ludi recte facti, donaque data recte sunto."415 This document dates from the days of the decay of the Roman religion, and is, of course, modernised by Livy; but it may give an idea of what is meant by writers who speak of an element of bargain or covenant in these vota. Still more elaborate, and probably more antique, is the famous formula of the vow of the ver sacrum in the darkest hour of the war with Hannibal.416 This very curious rite, which proves beyond question the devotion of the Italian stocks to the principle of the votum, consisted of a promise to dedicate to Mars or Jupiter all the valuable products of a single spring, including the male children born at that time; to this the Romans had recourse for the last time in 217 b.c., and Livy has fortunately preserved the words of the vow. These, with the exception of the dedication of the children, which is judiciously omitted, probably stand much as they had come down from a remote antiquity. The votum is put in the form of a rogatio to the people, without whose sanction it could not be put in force; are they willing to dedicate to Jupiter all the young of oxen, sheep, or pigs born in the spring five years after date, if the State shall have been preserved during those years from all its enemies? The curious feature of the document is, not that it binds the deity to any course of action, but that it secures the individual Roman against his anger in case of any chance slip in his part of the process, and the people against any evil consequences arising from such a slip or from misdoing on the part of an individual. "Si quis clepsit, ne populo scelus esto neve cui cleptum erit: si atro die faxit insciens, probe factum esto."417 Of this formula a recent writer of great learning and ability has written thus: "The well-known liturgical archive containing Rome's address to Jupiter in the critical days of the Hannibalic war is a wary and cleverly drawn legal document, intended to bind the god as well as the State."418 He is no exception to the rule that those who have not habitually occupied themselves with the Roman religion are liable to misinterpret its details. This is not an address to Jupiter, nor is there any sign in it that the god was considered as bound to perform his part as in a contract; the covenant is a one-sided one, the people undertaking an act of self-renunciation if the god be gracious to them, and thereby going far to assure themselves that he will so be gracious. And the legal cast of the language, which seems so apt to mislead the unwary,419 is only to be found in the clauses which guarantee the people against the contingency of the whole vow being ruined by the inadvertence or the rascality of an individual; surely a very natural and inevitable caveat, where for once the whole people, and not only their priests or magistrates, were concerned in the transaction.
A curious form of the votum, which, however, I can only mention in passing, is that addressed to the gods of a hostile city, with a view to induce them to desert their temples and take up their abode at Rome; this is the process called evocatio, which was successfully applied at the siege of Veii, when Juno Regina consented to betray her city.420 Macrobius, commenting on Virgil's lines (Aen. ii. 351),