[706] Polybius vi. 56.
[707] Livy xxxi. 4 ad fin., cp. xxv. 2, xxvii. 36,
etc. For the Iovis epulum see R.F. 216 foll. and the
references there given. Wissowa, R.K. foll. 111. 385
foll. I am not sure that I am right in limiting the
human partakers of the epulum of Nov. 13 to the plebeian
magistrates.
[708] Livy xxxi. 5. The importance of the words
"prolationem finium" does not seem to have been noticed
by historians. If they are genuine they indicate an
undoubtedly aggressive attitude.
[709] Livy xxxi. 7 and 8.
[710] Livy xxxvi. 1.
[711] Augustine, Civ. Dei, iv. 27: "Relatum est in
litteras doctissimum pontificem Scaevolam disputasse
tria genera tradita deorum: unum a poetis, alterum a
philosophis, tertium a principibus civitatis. Primum
genus nugatorium dicit esse, quod multa de diis
fingantur indigna, etc. Expedire igitur falli in
religione civitates."
[712] Livy xxxii. 9, cp. 28. In connection with these
prodigia it may be worth noting that in xxxii. 30 we
are told that a consul vowed a temple to Juno Sospita,
who had in her famous seat at Lanuvium been a constant
centre of marvel-mongering. Livy xxxiv. 53 places the
building of this temple in foro olitorio three years
later, if we may read there Sospitae instead of the
Matutae of the MSS. with Sigonius: (cp. Aust, de
Aedibus, p. 21, and Wissowa, R.K. 117). This
interesting deity had been taken into the Roman worship
in 338 B.C., but not moved from Lanuvium, which had
peculiar religious relations with Rome. See Myth. Lex.
vol. ii. p. 608, where the attributes of this Juno in
art are described by Vogel. The date of the temple at
Rome was 194. Whether the object of it was to diminish
the portents at Lanuvium it is impossible to say, but
judging from the records of prodigia in Julius
Obsequens it had that effect. I find only four
prodigia reported from Lanuvium after this date.
[713] See the passage in Frontinus, de Aqueductibus,
i. 7 (C. Herschel's edition gives the reading of the
best MS.), and the mutilated passage in the new epitomes
of Livy found by Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt
(Oxyrrhyncus Papyri, vol. iv. pp. 101 and 113). The
general bearing of the two passages taken together seems
to me to be that given in the text.
[714] Cic. ad Fam. i. 1 and 2. A somewhat similar case
in 190 B.C. will be found in Livy xxxviii. 45, where the
oracle forbade a Roman army to cross the Taurus range.
[715] Livy xxxiv. 55.
[716] Livy xxxviii. 56, mentions statues which were
believed to be those of Scipio the elder, his brother
Lucius, and Ennius, "in Scipionum monumento" outside the
Porta Capena, and another of Scipio at Liternum, where
he had a villa; this one Livy says that he saw himself
blown down by a storm. On statues and busts at Rome, see
Pliny xxxiv. 28 foll.; Mrs. Strong, Roman Sculpture,
p. 28 foll.; Cambridge Companion to Latin Studies, p.
550 foll.; and for coins, p. 456.
[717] See above, p. 240, for the remarkable exception in
the case of the elder Scipio, whose practice when in
Rome was to go up to the Capitoline temple before
daybreak and contemplate the statue of Jupiter; the dogs
never barked at him, and the aedituus opened the cella
Iovis at his summons. I see no good ground for
rejecting this story, which is not likely to have been
invented. It can be traced back to two writers, Oppius,
the friend of Caesar, and Julius Hyginus, the librarian
of Augustus (Gell. vi. 1. 1), and was probably based on
tradition. Livy mentions it in xxvi. 19, and suggests
that this and other ways of Scipio were assumed to
impress the multitude. The Roman mind was naturally
averse from such individualism in religion; but Scipio
was beyond doubt more familiar than his contemporaries
with Greek ideas. In a chapter on Idealism in his little
book on Religion and Art in Ancient Greece, Professor
Ernest Gardner writes: "The statue (of Athene) by
Phidias within the Parthenon offered not merely that
form in which she would choose to appear if she showed
herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her form as
if she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon
such an image helped the worshipper as much as--perhaps
more than--any service or ritual, to bring himself into
communion with the goddess, and to fit himself, as a
citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in
contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in
politics, in literature, and in art." That Scipio had
some feeling of this kind need not be doubted, though
the statue was not a great work of art like that of
Phidias. Cp. Lucretius, vi. 75 foll.
[718] See below, p. 386.
[719] Marquardt, 332, and Mommsen, Staatsrecht, i. ed.
2, p. 463 foll.
[720] Livy, Epit. xix.
[721] Livy xxxvii. 51: "Religio ad postremum vicit, ut
dicto audiens esset flamen pontifici." Here religio is
used in the sense of obligation to the ius divinum.
[722] Livy xxvii. 6; cp. 36.
[723] This story is told in Livy xl. 42.
[724] Livy xxvii. 8. For the compelling power (capere)
of the Pont. Max., see Marq. 314. The story may have
come from the annals of the Valerii Flacci, and also
from those of the pontifices; it was apparently well
known, as Valerius Maximus knew it (vi. 9. 2).
[725] Velleius ii. 43.
[726] Livy xxxi. 50.
[727] For the oath see "Lex incerta reperta Bantiae,"
lines 16 and 17, in Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani. The
oath taboo is mentioned by Gellius 10. 15. 3.; Festus
104, and Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 113.
[728] Livy xxxii. 7; xxxix. 39.
[729] Tac. Ann. iv. 16.
[730] See above, p. 255.
[731] Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. v. p.
85 foll. Very interesting is the modern survival of
Dionysiac rites recently discovered in Thrace by Mr.
Dawkins (Hellenic Journal, 1906, p. 191).
[732] Farnell, op. cit. vol. v. p. 150.
[733] Quoted by Farnell, p. 151, from Rohde's Psyche.
[734] It is possible that superstitio may originally
have had some such meaning; see W. Otto in Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft, 1909, p. 548 foll.; Mayor's
edition of Cic. de Nat. Deorum, note on ii. 72 foll.
[735] Ovid, Fasti, iii. 523 foll. See also Roman
Society in the Age of Cicero, p. 289.
[736] See Mr. Heitland's History of the Roman
Republic, vol. ii. p. 229 note, and cp. Wissowa in
Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. s.v. "Bacchanalia."
[737] Livy xxxix. 8 foll.
[738] Plato, de Rep. 364 B; cp. Laws, 933 D.
[739] "Quaestio de clandestinis coniurationibus decreta
est," Livy xxxix. 8; so also in chs. 14 and 17. Cp.
Sctm. de Bacchanalibus, line 13, "conioura (se)." This
document is, strictly speaking, a letter to the
magistrates "in agro Teurano" in Bruttium embodying the
orders of the Senatus consultum. It will be found in
Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani, or in Wordsworth,
Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin.
[740] Livy xxxix. 16: "Omnia, dis propitiis
volentibusque, faciemus, qui quia suum numen sceleribus
libidinibusque contaminari indigne ferebant," etc.
[741] Mommsen, Strafrecht, p. 567 foll.
[742] Livy xxxix. 18 ad fin. Sctm. de Bacch. lines 3
foll.
[743] Religion der Römer, p. 78.
[744] Livy xl. 29 seems to have put his account together
from Cassius Hemina and other annalists, so far as we
can judge from the reference to them in Pliny, N.H.
xiii. 84; Valerius Antias, who simply stated that the
writings were Pythagorean as well as Numan, Livy
rejects as ignorant of the chronological impossibility
of making the king contemporary with the philosopher.
The fragment of Cassius Hemina is quoted in Pliny, sec.
86; Val. Max. i. 1, and Plutarch, Numa 22, add nothing
to our knowledge of the incident.
[745] See Schanz, Gesch. der röm. Literatur, i. 268;
Pliny, loc. cit., calls him "vetustissimus auctor
annalium," but his work was later than the Annals or
Origines of Cato.
[746] Ennius came from South Italy (Rudiae in Messapia),
the home of Pythagoreanism. For traces of it in his
works, see Reid on Cicero, Academica priora, ii. 51.
[747] This is the view taken by Colin, Rome et la
Grèce, 200-146 B.C., p. 269 foll. This reaction was
probably only a part of the general reversion to
conservatism which we have been noticing in the action
of the government in religious matters.
[748] See above, p. 149 foll.
[749] Quoted by Aust, Religion der Römer, p. 64. The
passage is in Zeller's Religion und Philosophie bei den
Römern, a short treatise reprinted in his Vorträge und
Abhandlungen, ii. 93 foll.
[750] Ribbeck, Fragmenta Tragicorum Latinorum, p. 54.
[751] Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p.
334.
[752] Cistellaria, ii. 1. 45 foll.
[753] Aust, op. cit. p. 66.
[754] See Schanz, Gesch. der röm. Literatur, vol. i.
p. 75.