(2) The two chief notes of the next period are superstition and
scepticism: both the populace and the educated classes lose faith
Greek deities.
in the old religion, but they supply its place in different
ways. The disasters of the early part of the second
Punic War revealed an unparalleled religious nervousness:
portents and prodigies were announced from all quarters, it was
felt that the divine anger was on the state, yet there was no belief
in the efficacy of the old methods for restoring the pax deum.
Accordingly recourse is had, under the direction of the Sibylline
books, to new forms of appeal for the divine help, the general vowing
of the ver sacrum and the elaborate Greek lectisternium after Trasimene
in 217 B.C., and the human sacrifice in the forum after Cannae in
the following year. The same spirit continues to show itself in the
almost reckless introduction of Greek deities even within the walls of
the pomoerium and their ready identification with gods of the old
religion, whose cult they in reality superseded. Thus we hear of
temples dedicated to Juventas = Hebe (191 B.C.), Diana = Artemis
(179 B.C.), Mars = Ares (138 B.C.), and nd even such unexpected
identifications as that of the Bona Dea (q.v.)—a cult title of the
ancient Fauna, the female counterpart of the countryside numen
Faunus—with a Greek goddess of women, Damia. At the same
time the new acquaintance with Greek art introduces the making
of cult statues, in which the identified Greek type is usually adopted
without change, with such curious results as the representation of the
Penates under the form of the Dioscuri. But more significant still
was the order of the Sibylline books in 206 B.C. for the introduction
of the worship of the Magna Mater (see Great Mother of the Gods)
from Pessinus and her ultimate installation on the Palatine in
191 B.C.: the door was thus opened to the wilder and more orgiastic
cults of Greece and the Orient, which at once laid hold on the
popular mind. In the train of the Magna Mater came the secret
Oriental deities.
cult of Bacchus, which grew to such proportions in
private worship that it had to be suppressed by decree of
the Senate in 186 B.C., and later on were established the
cults of Ma of Phrygia, introduced by Sulla and identified with
Bellona, the Egyptian Isis, and, after Pompey's war with the pirates,
even the Persian Mithras (q.v.). In all these more emotional rituals,
the populace sought expression for the religious emotions which
were not satisfied by the cold worship of the older deities.
Meanwhile a corresponding change was taking place in the attitude of the educated classes owing to the spread of Greek literature. The knowledge of Greek mythology, to which they were thus introduced, set poets and antiquarians at work in a field wholly foreign to the Roman religious spirit, the task of creating a Roman anthropomorphic mythology. This they accomplished partly by the popular process of adoption and identification, partly by imitative creation. In this way grew up the “religion of the poets,” whose falseness and shallowness was patent even to contemporary thinkers. But more important was the influence of philosophy, which led soon enough to a general scepticism among the upper classes. Its first note is struck by Ennius in his translation of the Scepticism. Sicilian rationalist Euhemerus, who explained the genesis of the gods as apotheosized mortals. In the last century of the Republic the two later Greek schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism laid hold on Roman society. The influence of Epicureanism was wholly destructive to religion, but not perhaps very widespread: Stoicism became the creed of the educated classes and produced several attempts, notably those of Scaevola and Varro, at a reconciliation of philosophy and popular religion, in which it was maintained that the latter was in itself untrue, but a presentation of a higher truth suited to the capacity of the popular mind. Such a theory was bound to be fatal, as it makes religion at once a mere instrument of statecraft.
The result on the old religion was twofold. On the one hand, worship passed into formalism and formalism into disuse. Some of the old cults passed away altogether, others survived in name and form, but were so wholly devoid of inner meaning that even the learning of a Varro could not tell their intention or the character of the deity with whom they were concerned. The old priesthood, and in particular the flaminia, came to be regarded as tiresome restrictions on political life and were neglected: from 87 to 11 B.C. the office of flamen Dialis was vacant. On the other hand, as the result in part of the theory of Stoicism, religion passed into the hands of the politicians: cults were encouraged or suppressed from political motives, the membership of the colleges of pontifices and augurs, now conferred by popular vote, was sought for its social and political advantages, and augury was debased till it became the meanest tool of the politician. In the general wreck of the old religion, little survived but the household cult, protected by its own genuineness and vitality.
(3) The revival of Augustus, which marks the opening of the last stage, was perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the whole story. It was no doubt very largely political, a part of his plan for the general renaissance of Roman life, which was to centre no longer round the abstract notion of the state, but round the persons Imperial religion. of an imperial house. But it was genuinely religious, in that he saw that no revival could be effective which did not appeal to the deeper sentiments of the populace. It was thus his business to revitalize the old forms with a new and more vigorous content. His new palace on the Palatine he intended to be primarily the seat of the Julian family and the cults associated with it, and secondarily the centre of the new popular religion. With this object he consecrated there his new temple of Apollo (28 B.C.), associated for long with the Julian house, and adopted by Augustus as his special patron at Actium, and transferred to its keeping the Sibylline books, thus marking the new headquarters of the Graeco-Roman religion. Similar in purpose was his institution of the ludi saeculares in 17 B.C., in which a day celebration was added to the old παννυχὶς, and Apollo and Diana deliberately set up as a counterpart to the Capitoline Jupiter and Juno: Horace's hymn written for the festival is a good epitome of Augustus's religious intentions. In the same spirit he established a new shrine of Vesta Augusta within the palace, a private cult at first, but destined to be a serious rival of the ancient worship in the forum. A still more marked action was the building of a great temple at the end of his own new forum to Mars Ultor,—Mars, the ancestor of the Julian gens, as of the Roman people itself, and now to be worshipped as the avenger of Caesar's murderers. Nor did he hesitate to avail himself of the popular outburst, which immediately after the murder had consecrated the site of Caesar's cremation with a bustum, to erect on the spot a permanent temple to his adopted father, under the definitely religious title of divus Julius. No doubt he also did much generally to revive the ancient cults: he rebuilt, as he tells us himself, eighty-two temples which had fallen into disrepair, he re-established the old priesthoods, filling once more the office of flamen Dialis and reviving such bodies as the Sodales Titii (see Titus Tatius) and the Arval Brothers (q.v.); but the new revival attached itself primarily to these four cults, and their tendency was unmistakable. Originally, no doubt, Augustus designed to attract religious feeling generally to the reigning house, but it was inevitable that the more personal note should be given to it. The deification of Julius Caesar was one important step; another was the natural prominence in the palace of the cult of the Genius of the emperor himself. As the palace cults became national, the worship of the Genius was bound to spread, and ultimately Augustus sanctioned its celebration at the compita together with the worship of the old Lares. But here he and the wiser of his successors drew the line, and though under oriental influence divine honours were paid to the living emperor outside Italy, they were never permitted officially in Rome. In the succeeding centuries Augustus's intentions were realized with a fullness which he would hardly have wished, and the cult of the imperial house practically superseded the state religion as the official form of worship.
With this last period the story of Roman religion really draws to a close. For, though the form of the old cults was long preserved and even Antoninus Pius was honoured in an inscription for his care of the ancient rites of religion, the vital spirit was almost gone. In the popular mind, the hosts of exciting oriental cults, which in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Empire filled Rome with the rites of mysticism and initiation, held undisputed sway; and with the more educated a revived philosophy, less accurate perhaps in thought, but more satisfying to the religious conscience, gave men a clearer monotheistic conception, and a notion of individual relations with the divine in prayer and even of consecration. It was with these elements—fiercely antagonistic because, so closely allied in character—that the battle of Christianity was really fought, and though, after its official adoption, the old religion lingered on as “paganism” and died hard at the end, it was really doomed from the moment when the Augustan revival had taken its irrecoverable bias in the direction of the emperor-worship.
Bibliography.—(a) General.—Preller, Römische Mythologie, edited by Jordan; Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, vol. iii., edited by Wissowa; Th. Mommsen, History of Rome; E. Aust, Die Religion der Römer; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer and Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals; J. B. Carter, The Religion of Numa; W. H. Roscher, Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. See further, Greek Religion; Mithras; Etruria, Religion; and articles on the deities, festivals and colleges.
(b) Special.—For the Imperial Period, G. Boissier, La Religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins: La fin du Paganisme; Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium; for the private and gentile cults, A. de Marchi, Il culto private di Roma Antica. (C. Ba.)
ROMANS, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Drôme, 12½ m. N.E. of Valence on the railway to Grenoble. Pop. (1906) town, 13,304; commune, 17,622. Romans stands on an eminence on the right bank of the Isère, a fine stone
