[804] For the Pythagoreanism of the Neo-platonic
movement in the third century A.D. consult Bussell,
Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics (Edin. 1910), p.
30 foll., who explains the reaction from Stoicism to
Neo-Platonism. See also Caird, Gifford Lectures, ii.
162 foll.
[805] Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 403, says that
it had ceased to exist for centuries as a philosophy,
but cautiously adds in a note that the knowledge of it
was not extinct. The famous Orphic tablets from South
Italy are taken as dating from the third and fourth
centuries B.C., and if not actually Pythagorean, they
are next door to being so. See Miss Harrison,
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 660.
[806] Tusc. Disp. i. 38.
[807] See, e.g., Prof. Taylor's little book on Plato
(Constable), p. 11.
[808] See above, p. 349.
[809] Sextus Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ii. 281 foll.
[810] For the devotion of the believers to the founder
and his ipse dixit, see Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 5. 10.
[811] The relation of Posidonius to Roman literature has
been much discussed of late. See, e.g., Norden,
Virgil, Aen. vi., index, s.v. "Stoa"; Schmekel, Die
mittlere Stoa, 85 foll., 238 foll.
[812] For Panaetius' enthusiasm for Plato and his
teaching, see Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 32. 79; the whole
passage indicates, though it does not exactly prove, an
approach to the Platonic psychology.
[813] Caird, Gifford Lectures, vol. ii. p. 85.
[814] See above, p. 75. The idea that the practice of
cremation influenced the ideas of the Roman about the
soul was first, I think, suggested by Boissier,
Religion romaine, i. 310. Cicero himself hints at this
conclusion in Tusc. Disp. i. 16. 36: "In terram enim
cadentibus corporibus, hisque humo tectis, e quo dictum
est humari, sub terra censebant reliquam vitam agi
mortuorum. Quam eorum opinionem magni errores consecuti
sunt; quos auxerunt poetae."
[815] This point is well put by Dill, p. 493 of Roman
Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. See also
Dieterich, Eine Mithras-Liturgie, p. 200 fol.;
Stewart, Myths of Plato, 352-53.
[816] Schmekel, Die mittlere Stoa, p. 400 foll.
[817] De Rep. vi. 26.
[818] Ib. The word providet reminds us that this
transcendental philosophy supplied the later Stoics with
an explanation of divination. See Bouché-Leclercq,
Hist. de divination, i. 68; Dill, op. cit. p. 439;
Seneca, Nat. Quaest. ii. 52, fully accepted
divination. Cp. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 37. 66, where he
quotes his own Consolatio; see above, p. 388.
Panaetius, however, had courageously denied divination:
Cic. Div. i. 3. 6; Zeller, Stoics, etc., p. 352.
[819] De Rep. vi. 15, 26, and 29.
[820] Tusc. Disp. i. 16. 36 foll. On the whole subject
of the rise of the soul after death see Dieterich, Eine
Mithras-Liturgie, p. 179 foll.
[821] Schmekel, op. cit. p. 438; Stewart, Myths of
Plato, p. 300.
[822] For Nigidius, see Schanz, Gesch. der röm.
Literatur (ed. 2), vol. ii. p. 419 foll.
[823] "Nigidius Figulus Pythagoreus et magus in exilio
moritur" is the notice of him in St. Jerome's Chronicle
for the year 45 B.C.
[824] These letters are in the 12th book of those to
Atticus, Nos. 12-40.
[825] Ad Att. xii. 36. The translation is Shuckburgh's.
[826] A good example is Virg. Aen. viii. 349, but it
is needless to multiply instances of the religio loci.
Serv. ad Aen. i. 314 defines lucus as "arborum
multitudo cum religione."
[827] Ad Att. xii. 36; cp. 35. He uses the Greek word
[Greek: apotheôsis] in 35. 1, which seems to have come
into use in his own time; see Liddell & Scott, s.v.
[828] See above, p. 58.
[829] Aen. vi. 743. The meaning of these words seems
to be quite plain, though commentators have worried
themselves over them from Servius downwards. The mistake
has been in not sufficiently considering the force of
quisque, and puzzling too much over the vague word
Manes. Henry discerned the true meaning in our own
time. See his Aeneidea, vol. iii. p. 397. Cp. the
words quoted above from Somn. Scip.: "mens cuiusque is
est quisque." M. S. Reinach (Cultes, etc. ii. 135
foll.) is not far out: "Nous souffrons chacun suivant le
degré de souillure de nos âmes."
[830] C.I.L. i. 639, with Mommsen's note.
[831] See R.F. p. 308.
[832] Tusc. Disp. i. 12. 27. For the "ius Manium," de
Legibus, ii. 22 and 54 foll.
[833] Ad Att. xii. 18: "Longum illud tempus cum non
ero magis me movet quam hoc exiguum," etc. Cp. Tusc.
i. ad fin.
[834] Ad Fam. iv. 5. 6: "Quod si quis apud inferos
sensus est, qui illius in te amor fuit pietasque in
omnes suos, hoc certe illa te facere nonvult."
[835] Sall. Cat. ch. 51: "Mortem cuncta mortalium
dissolvere, ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse."
This is the Epicurean doctrine, which Caesar was said to
hold.
[836] Catull. 5. 6; Pliny, N.H. vii. 188. The whole
passage is worth quoting: "Post sepulturam vanae Manium
ambages. Omnibus a supremo die eadem quae ante primum,
nec magis a morte sensus ullus aut corpori aut animae
quam ante natalem. Eadem enim vanitas in futurum etiam
se propagat et in mortis quoque tempora sibi vitam
mentitur, alias immortalitatem animae, alias
transfigurationem, alias sensum inferis dando et Manes
colendo deumque faciendo qui iam etiam homo esse
desierit, ceu vero ullo modo spirandi ratio ceteris
animalibus praestet, aut non diuturniora in vita multa
reperiantur quibus nemo similem divinat immortalitatem,"
etc.
[837] There is an essay on this form of literature in
the Études morales sur l'antiquité of Constant Martha,
p. 135 foll.
[838] Tusc. Disp. i. 27. 66.
[839] Lact. Inst. i. 15. 20.
[840] Lact. iii. 18.
[841] See Schanz, Gesch. der röm. Literatur, vol. ii.
p. 376.
[842] Fragments 54 and 55.
[843] P. 158 foll.
[844] Lucr. vi. 764 foll. Cp. iii. 966 foll.; Masson,
Lucretius, i. p. 402. Mr. Cyril Bailey also reminds me
of Lucr. iii. 31-93, and 1053 to end; and adds a decided
opinion that the poet is not here thinking of the common
Roman, but of the educated Roman brought up on Greek and
Graeco-Roman poetry and philosophy.
[845] Polyb. vi. 56.
[846] Tusc. i. 46. 111.
[847] See Roscher's Myth. Lex.s.v. "Orcus";
Wissowa, R.K. p. 192.
[848] See above, p. 107.
[849] Müller-Deecke, Etrusker, ii. 108 foll.
Illustrations can be seen in Dennis, Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria, ed. 2.
[850] Captivi, v. 4. 1.
[851] La Religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, vol.
i. p. 310.
[852] Cic. Tusc. i. 16. 37. For the eschatology of the
sixth Aeneid, a curious mélange of religion,
philosophy, and folklore, see Norden's work on Virgil,
Aeneid, vi. (index, p. 468). Norden believes, I may
note, that the philosophical and religious elements in
it are mainly derived from Posidonius. Cp. also Glover,
Studies in Virgil, ch. x. (Hades). For popular
beliefs in Hades, etc., under the Empire, see
Friedländer's Sittengeschichte, vol. iii. last
chapter.
[853] Weil, Études sur l'antiquité grecque, p. 12,
quoted by Glover, p. 218.
[854] See above, p. 105.
[855] Since this lecture was written a most interesting
discussion of Greek ideas, Achaean and Pelasgic, about
the relation of soul and body after death, has appeared
in Mr. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion, especially in chapters v. and vi., confirming
me, to some extent at least, in the conjecture I had
here hazarded. The working of the imagination in regard
to a future state is in Greece, in his view, peculiar to
the older or Pelasgic population; and if the Etruscans
were of Pelasgic stock, as is now believed by many,
their imaginative grotesqueness, a degraded form perhaps
of the original characteristic, acting on the ideas of a
still more primitive population of which the Lemuria is
a survival, might explain the later prevalence of a
gruesome eschatology at Rome. But whoever studies Mr.
Lawson's chapters closely will find serious difficulties
in the way even of such a hypothesis as this.
[856] Ovid, Fasti, v. 430 foll.; R.F. p. 109.
Wissowa, R.K. p. 192, attributes the ideas of larvae
(ghosts) and of Orcus, not to religion, but to popular
superstition. If he here means by religion the State
religion and the Parentalia in particular, I can agree
with him.
[857] Dr. Carter allows this in Hastings' Dict. of
Religion and Ethics, vol. i. (Roman section of article
"Ancestor Worship.")
[858] See R.F. p. 334.
[859] R.F. p. 107.
[860] Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, ii. 693
foll.
[861] Varro, L.L. v. 25; Paulus p. 216;
Hülsen-Jordan, Röm. Topogr. iii. p. 268 foll. The
remains of these puticuli were unluckily very
imperfectly reported, and have been lost in the building
of the Rome of to-day. On the question of the religious
aspect of the two ways of disposing of the dead, burial
and cremation, it is as well to remember Dieterich's
warning in Mutter Erde, p. 66, note: "den Versuch, aus
der Verbreitung und dem Wechsel der Sitte des
Verbrennens und Begrabens für meine Untersuchung
Schlüsse zu gewinnen, habe ich völlig aufgegeben, als
ich angesichts der ungeheueren Materialen meines
Kollegen von Duhn die Unmöglicheit solcher Schlüsse
einsehen musste." In Mr. Lawson's book quoted above it
seems to me to be proved that the object of both methods
is the same, viz. to destroy the body as quickly as
possible in order to prevent the soul from re-entering
it and annoying the survivors.
[862] This is well explained by Cumont in his Religions
orientales dans le paganisme romain, p. 196 foll.,
following Bouché-Leclercq's work on astrology in Greece.
Cumont thinks that astrology took over the business of
the augurs and haruspices, which was now dropped, and
this is true in the main as regards the individual, but
not as regards the State; see above, p. 308 foll.
[863] For Fortuna in the writings of Caesar, etc., see
Classical Review, vol. xvii. p. 153. The locus
classicus for Fortuna as a deity under the early empire
is Pliny, N.H. ii. 22.
[864] Cato, R.R. ch. v. 4.
[865] Val. Max. i. 3. 2, who no doubt was following
Livy; for in the Epitomes of some lost books of Livy
discovered at Oxyrrhyncus by Grenfell and Hunt (Oxyrrh.
Papyri, vol. iv. p. 101), the same fact is alluded to.
For the embassy, Maccab. i. 14. 24; xv. 15-24. Two
extracts from the text of Valerius, which is here lost,
both state that proselytising Jews were at this time
driven from Rome; the Jupiter Sabazius, whose cult they
were propagating, can hardly be other than that of
Jehovah; see Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of
Christ, pt. ii. vol. ii. p. 233 of the English
translation. The expulsion of Chaldaei may, however,
have been a separate measure of the praetor Hispalus.
[866] Plutarch, Marius, 42.
[867] Suet. Aug. 1. I have seen a learned work about a
century old, now entirely forgotten, in which it is
maintained that Virgil's fourth Eclogue is simply a
genethliacon of Augustus; the arguments, which are
ingenious but futile, are drawn from the poem of
Manilius.