It was indeed a wonderful renaissance of the old Roman religion, this work of Augustus; what seemed to be dying out sprang up again with new and vigorous life. Augustus was persuaded that the prosperity of Rome was thus linked with the maintenance of the ancient cult, and, as we have seen his policy was adopted and continued by his successors in the Empire, the Emperor Marcus (A. D. 161-80) following out the policy with perhaps greater ardor than any of his predecessors.
Very carefully indeed were the hallowed traditions of the past revived, as belonging to the story of the making of Rome, closely linked in the policy of Augustus and the Emperors with the maintenance and further development of Rome's grandeur and power. Among these hallowed traditions we have not alluded to the ancient sacerdotal corporations which had, especially in the latter years of the Republic, in a measure passed out of sight and been suffered to decay. Augustus revived these and re-established them, if possible giving them more than their ancient position and influence; and these powerful religious corporations, then re-established, continued to flourish, some of them, until the time of Constantine, when naturally with the fall of Paganism they sank into decay and oblivion. Of these brotherhoods we may mention, as instances, the Salii and the Luperci. To be a member of one of these corporations Avas a privilege highly esteemed under the rule of the Pagan Emperors. The young Marcus Aurelius, for instance, was admitted into the Salian confraternity when he was only eight years old, and subsequently became the president; and prided himself on his accurate knowledge of the ritual which was used when a new member was admitted to the college.
But of these sacerdotal colleges that of the Arval Brothers was the most famous and perhaps the best known. They traced their foundation back to the times of Romulus, the first King of Rome. Romulus, so said the ancient tradition, with the eleven sons of Acca Laurentia, his nurse, had been the first Arval Brothers. They appear to have been united as a college of priests, instituted to pray and sacrifice to the gods who presided over the fruits of the fields; hence their name, fromarva, the fields. They invoked the blessing of the immortals upon agriculture, in accordance with a very old form of Roman worship. The chief deity invoked was feminine, but nameless, pointing to a period anterior to the introduction of divinities with specific functions. She is invoked simply as "Dea Dia."
During the Republic, whilst always existing as a confraternity, we learn little of these Arval Brothers. They had nothing to do apparently with the State, hence the silence which rests upon them. In the renaissance of religion and of archaic customs under Augustus the Arvals received a large share of Imperial patronage; this was especially owing to the antiquity of their foundation and the mystic reference of their ceremonies and ritual to agriculture and that primitive rural life in which the reforming Emperor took so deep an interest. Under the Empire the confraternity numbered among its members many of the foremost personages in Rome, with the Emperor himself at its head. It was considered a high honor to be one of the ancient corporation, and in a list of titles and dignities proudly displayed by a powerful Roman under the Empire, the fact of being an Arval Brother was never omitted.
Their chief annual festival lasted three days. Careful minutes of their proceedings were kept, and we learn from these that a most elaborate ceremonial was observed, consisting of sacrifice and prayer, processions, and official repasts. A special dress, too, was required, the whole ritual being based on ancient tradition. Late discoveries have localized the site of the sanctuary where these Arval mysteries were performed. It seems to have been some few miles from Rome on the right bank of the Tiber, as it flowed through the Campagna from Rome to Ostia.
In the little book of the Arval rites which was given to each brother was the famous sacred song of the Arvals, which had come down from remote antiquity, and which they repeated without perhaps understanding its archaic phraseology.
This fashionable revival of a very ancient guild or confraternity thus introduced into a company or brotherhood, made up during the Empire of the noblest and most illustrious of the Romans, memories and traditional usages handed down from Romulus and the earliest of the Kings of Rome.
The Arval Brotherhood were besides especially bound to loyal duties in connection with the reigning Emperor and his Imperial house. They solemnly "kept" his birthday and the birthdays of his family, celebrating, too, the memories of any victories in which he had been concerned.
Fragments of marble tablets on which the acts of the Arval Brotherhood are inscribed have been discovered, with dates which show its existence from the early days of the Empire down to A. D. 238. Nothing, however, has been found bearing a later date than this—the Emperor Gordian's name being on the last dated fragment.
It would seem as though shortly after the death of Gordian the confraternity ceased to exist. Most probably the favorable disposition of the Emperor Philip, A. D. 244 to A. D. 249, towards Christianity determined him to put an end to the famous Pagan college in which the reigning Emperor occupied so prominent a position.