2. The Priests

To appease or enlist the aid of these gods Italy employed an elaborate clergy. In his home the father was priest; but public worship was conducted by several collegia—associations—of priests, each filling its own vacancies, but all under the lead of a pontifex maximus elected by the centuries. No special training was necessary for membership in these sacred colleges; any citizen might be enrolled in them or leave them; they formed no separate order or caste and were politically powerless except as tools of the state. They received the income of certain state lands for their support, with slaves to serve them; and grew rich through generations of pious legacies.

In the third century before Christ the main pontifical college had nine members. They kept historical annals, recorded laws, took auspices, offered sacrifices, and purified Rome with quinquennial lustrations. In performing the official ritual the pontiffs were aided by fifteen flamines—kindlers of the sacrificial flames. Minor pontifical colleges had special functions: the Salii, or Leapers, ushered in each New Year with a ritual dance to Mars; the fetiales sanctified the ratification of treaties and declarations of war; and theLuperci, or Brotherhood of the Wolf, carried on the strange rites of the Lupercalia. The college of the Vestal Virgins tended the state hearth, and sprinkled it daily with holy water from the fountain of the sacred nymph Egeria. These white-clad, white-veiled nuns were chosen from among girls six to ten years of age; they took a vow of virginity and service for thirty years, but in return they received many public honors and privileges. If any of them was found guilty of sexual relations she was beaten with rods and buried alive; Roman historians record twelve cases of such punishment. After thirty years they were free to leave and marry, but few took or found the opportunity.¹²

The most influential of the priestly colleges was that of the nine augures who studied the intent or will of the gods, in earlier times by watching the flight of birds,^I later by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. Before every important act of policy, government, or war, the “auspices were taken” by the magistrates and interpreted by the augurs, or by special haruspices—liver inspectors—whose art went back through Etruria to Chaldea and beyond. As the priests were occasionally open to financial persuasion, their pronouncements were sometimes adjusted to the needs of the purchaser; for example, inconvenient legislation could be stopped by announcing that the auspices were unfavorable for further business on that day; or the Assembly might be induced by “favorable” auspices to vote a war.¹³ In major crises the government professed to learn the pleasure of Heaven by consulting the Sibylline Books—the recorded oracles of the Sibyl, or priestess of Apollo, at Cumae. Through such means, and occasional deputations to the oracle at Delphi, the aristocracy could influence the people in any direction to almost any end.¹⁴

The ritual of worship aimed merely to offer the gods a gift or sacrifice to win their aid or avert their wrath. To be effective, said the priests, the ceremony had to be performed with such precision of words and movements as only the clergy could manage. If any mistake was made, the rite had to be repeated, even to thirty times. Religio meant the performance of ritual with religious care.¹⁵ The essence of the ceremony was a sacrifice—literally making a thing sacer—i.e., belonging to a god. In the home the offering would normally be a bit of cake or wine placed on the hearth or dropped into the domestic fire; in the village it would be the first fruits of the crops, or a ram, a dog, or a pig; on great occasions, a horse, a hog, a sheep, or an ox; on supreme occasions the last three were slaughtered together in the su-ove-taur-ilia. Holy formulas pronounced over the victim turned it into the god who was to receive it; in this sense the god himself was sacrificed;¹⁶ and since only the viscera were burned on the altar, while priests and people ate the rest, the strength and glory of the god (men hoped) passed into his feasting worshipers. Sometimes human beings were offered in sacrifice; it is significant that a law had to be passed as late as 97 B.C. forbidding this. By a variant of these ideas of vicarious atonement a man might offer his life for the state as the Decii had done, or Marcus Curtius, who, to propitiate angry subterranean powers, leaped into a chasm that an earthquake had opened in the Forum—whereupon, we are told, the chasm closed and all was well.¹⁷

Pleasanter was the ceremony of purification. This might be of crops or flocks, of an army or a city. A procession made the circuit of the objects to be purified, prayer and sacrifice were offered, evil influences were thereby dispelled, and misfortune was turned away. Prayer was still imperfectly evolved from magic incantations; the words for it—carmen—meant not only a chant but a charm; and Pliny frankly reckoned prayer as a form of magical utterance.¹⁸ If the formula was properly recited, and was addressed to the correct deity according to the indigitamenta, or classified directory of the gods compiled and kept by the priests, the request was certain to be granted; if not granted there must have been an error in the ritual. Akin to magic were also the vota, or vowed offerings, with which the people sought to gain the help of the gods; sometimes great temples rose in fulfillment of such vows. The multitude of votive offerings found in Roman remains suggests that the religion of the people was warm and tender with piety and gratitude, a feeling of kinship with the hidden forces in nature, and an anxious desire to be in harmony with them all. By contrast the state religion was uncomfortably formal, a kind of legal and contractual relation between the government and the gods. When new cults flowed in from the conquered East it was this official worship that declined first, while the picturesque and intimate faith and ritual of the countryside patiently and obstinately survived. Victorious Christianity, half surrendering, wisely took over much of the faith and ritual; and, under new forms and phrases, they continue in the Latin world to this day.